There is increasing demand for higher bandwidth connections between nodes within wide-area networks. A variety of wired and wireless communications technologies, protocols, and related devices have been proposed to meet this demand. For example, IEEE 802.11 defines a set of standards applicable to wireless local area networks (WLANs). In some instances, local area networks (LANs) may contain nodes or stations that can communicate directly or indirectly with other nodes or stations, via either wired or wireless links. Bitstreams containing, for example, audio data, video data, or other types of data may be transmitted between these nodes or stations.
A given station may request to transmit a bitstream to another station. In so doing, this station may have a choice of several different wired or wireless links coupling it directly or indirectly to the other station. These different links may be associated with different bandwidth or bit rate capacities. Selecting the optimal link between the two stations for transmitting the bitstream would minimize frame loss and related frame re-transmissions, and would maximize the aggregate network throughput.